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Welcome to Tech News Today, I'm Mike Elgan - I'm Jason Howell.

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Tech News Today explores the most important stories of the day in conversation with the world's leading journalists.

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Our guest co-anchor this week is Natali Morris, a contributor to The TODAY Show, CNBC, The Queen Latifah Show and a former anchor for CNET TV. She's also the co-founder of ReadQuick, a speed reading app for iOS.

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The UK version of the NSA, which is called GCHQ, collected pictures from the Yahoo webcam chats of millions of users worldwide, according to a story in the Guardian newspaper today. Code-named “Optic Nerve,’ the capturing of pictures took place between 2008 and 2010 and involved many people not suspected of crimes. The GCHQ says their program was legal.

* Captured “substantial quantities of sexually explicit communications,” according to the paper

* One document delicately put it: "Unfortunately … it would appear that a surprising number of people use webcam conversations to show intimate parts of their body to the other person. Also, the fact that the Yahoo software allows more than one person to view a webcam stream without necessarily sending a reciprocal stream means that it appears sometimes to be used for broadcasting pornography."

The document estimates that between 3% and 11% of the Yahoo webcam imagery harvested by GCHQ contains "undesirable nudity" -- no numbers on “desirable nudity.”

* Pictures were used for experiments in automated facial recognition, to monitor GCHQ's existing targets, and to discover new targets of interest.

* Program saved one image every five minutes from the users' feeds

* The agency did make efforts to limit analysts' ability to see webcam images, restricting bulk searches to metadata only.

* Analysts were shown the faces of people with similar usernames to surveillance targets

* Optic Nerve was based on collecting information from GCHQ's huge network of internet cable taps, which was then processed and fed into systems provided by the NSA.

* Webcam information was fed into NSA's XKeyscore search tool, and NSA research was used to build the tool which identified Yahoo's webcam traffic.

* Largely anonymous user IDs, are unable to filter out information from UK or US citizens.

* Unlike the NSA, GCHQ is not required by UK law to "minimize", or remove, domestic citizens' information from its databases.

* Yahoo: "We were not aware of, nor would we condone, this reported activity," said a spokeswoman. "This report, if true, represents a whole new level of violation of our users' privacy that is completely unacceptable, and we strongly call on the world's governments to reform surveillance law consistent with the principles we outlined in December.

Boeing -- yeah, the company that makes jets and drones -- really is getting into the smartphone racket. Confirming two-year-old rumors, Boeing is building a super secure Android phone for American spies and government agencies called the Boeing Black. We learned about this the same way we learn about many secret smartphones: documents filed with the FCC.

* A letter accompanying the filing: “The device will be marketed and sold in a manner such that low level technical and operational information about the product will not be provided to the general public. Detailed technical information distributed at trade shows will be limited or protected by non-disclosure agreements.”

* Letter: “There are no serviceable parts on Boeing’s Black phone and any attempted servicing or replacing of parts would destroy the product. The Boeing Black phone is manufactured as a sealed device both with epoxy around the casing and with screws, the heads of which are covered with tamper proof covering to identify attempted disassembly.”

* “Any attempt to break open the casing of the device would trigger functions that would delete the data and software contained within the device and make the device inoperable.”

* Modular construction of the phone's 5.2-inch-tall body would allow users to attach devices that add such features as advanced location tracking, solar charging, satellite transceivers and biometric sensors.

* 50% heavier than iPhone and twice as thick.

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Google announced yesterday that it will host three conferences on its Project Ara phone. Now, conferences themselves aren’t interesting. But this news tells us that Google is actually serious about turning the phone concept into a real phone you can buy.

Google launched a new online education tool called Oppia today. It’s an open source project that enables anyone to create interactive learning activities called “explorations.” They can be put together collaboratively by people who have zero programming experience, then embedded into any web page.

* BrewBotThis year’s MWC must be the first to boast its very own beer (above) brewed by Belfast’s BrewBot. Started by a group of iOS designers and developers, BrewBot is a semi-automated brewing kit controlled by a mobile phone app which tracks the entire two-week brewing process with temperature and flow sensors.* Blackphone The Blackphone is a privacy-oriented smartphone for non-boffins which is a joint venture between security company Silent Circle (whose founder is Phil Zimmerman, the inventor of PGP) and Spanish smartphone makers Geeksphone.* Oral-B’s Interactive Toothbrush Continuing the invasion of interactivity into everyday objects, Oral-B’s SmartSeries 7000 toothbrush provides real-time guidance while you brush, records brushing activity and can spam your dentist with reports of your bad brushing technique. It’s the first ever toothbrush to debut at Mobile World Congress. [We also saw a smart toothbrush from Kolibree at CES.]* Fujitsu’s AR Repair KitFujitsu-gloveFujitsu often supplies some of the more enjoyably wacky demos at Mobile World Congress. This year’s crocodile-stroking haptics demo was no exception. However, the company also showed an impressive system for industrial workers featuring Augmented Reality (AR) and a gesture-detecting glove.* 2014-App-AdvtGaneshaSpeaks The alphabet of mobile content in India starts with A for Astrology, B for Bollywood, C for Cricket and D for Devotional. GaneshaSpeaks is the most popular astrology service in India with 10 million monthly users, half of whom access it via mobile. The company also employs 500 full-time astrologers to the create paid, personalized readings ordered by 8-10% of users. A personalized reading costs between $10 and $300.

TNT fan Luigi Claudio emailed us to give his thoughts about Samsung’s Mobile World Congress announcements. He wrote: “As a UX designer with a background in industrial design I'm very impressed by the process of product design and release that Samsung has undertaken with this product. I'm also impressed by how a company as big as Samsung has just released an update to their first version of the Galaxy Gear smartwatch after only 6 months, if not less.

He says he believes the “swift product cycle iteration and release would have not been possible if one of the requirements had been the compatibility with Android phones that are not engineered and built by Samsung.”

He also says he loves the show, and that “Natalie as a co-anchor is awesome.”

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Sean Whitehurst also supported Samsung’s decision to support only Samsung phones with their smartwatch line, writing: Why is there all the dislike for Samsung making devices that only pair with their own devices? Isn't it Samsung's best interest to get everyone into the Samsung world and use their app store so they can make money?

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You may have heard about IBM’s Cognitive computers, which are designed to develop creative computers that can think like humans do. One of their projects is a computer that can create new kinds of food recipes. They’re mostly mashups of existing foods -- chocolate burritos, Turkish bru-SKATE-ta and so on. Well soon you might get a chance to taste some of the computer’s creations. IBM has partnered with the Institute of Culinary Education to take an IBM Food Truck on a tour across the United States. The truck’s next stop: Austin, Texas, for the South By South West festival, which begins March 3.

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